In This Issue:
• Chard and Friends Make for a Lovely Local Frittata
• Grilled Ramps with Ricotta and Roasted Tomatoes (a la Abra)
• Take a Quiz
Chard and Friends: A Lovely Local Frittata
Spring can be an iffy thing here in the Chicago region, and we local food lovers have our fingers crossed that the dang snow and freeze predicted for Tuesday passes without much damage. Nonetheless, the early season crops — such as leafy greens and alliums (ramps, green onions, green garlic) — heed neither the weatherman nor the calendar.
Lucky for us.
Last week I found myself with some beautiful rainbow chard (look at those multi-colored stems!) from Gray Farms in Watseka, Illinois via Village Farmstand and a whole bunch of stuff from my friends at Three Sisters Garden in Kankakee: green onions, green garlic, pea shoots and microgreens. The following underscores how easy it is to turn a bunch of produce into something delicious, and then turn that into something even more delicious.
The vegetable sauté, including prep, took less than 20 minutes. Trim the garlic, onions and chard and slice into small pieces separately. Put a splash of olive oil into a pan, warm over medium, then add, in order, the garlic, then onions, then chard, stirring for a minute or two after each addition. When all have softened and wilted a bit, toss in the pea shoots and microgreens and stir a bit more. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. And you’re done…
I was in a frittata mood this morning, and why prep more veggies when I already had this combo in the fridge. My go-to frittata recipe is from Cooking With Scraps, a 2018 book by Lindsay-Jean Hard (Workman Publishing), which I recommend: It is filled with ideas, including some really novel ones most of us never would have dreamed up, for fighting food waste by repurposing those peels, cores, rinds and stems that we’ve always been prone to throw in the trash.
Based on the recipe, I put the vegetable combo in a pan, beat eight eggs together with 1/3 cup buttermilk and 2/3 cup block cheddar (diced). You can add salt and pepper but the vegetables were already seasoned. Cover the veggies with the egg mixture and put in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes to cook through. (The result is in the photo at the top.)
This frittata was local on local. The eggs were from Wisconsin’s Three Brothers Farm (via Avrom Farm’s e-commerce site), and the cheese from Wisconsin’s Nordic Creamery. OK, that splash of buttermilk was from Kalona Organics in eastern Iowa, but it’s so close I’m going to dub it local anyway.
This is great right out of the oven, but frittatas keep well in the fridge. So Barb and I each had a 1/8 slice, and we have six more waiting for breakfasts this week. (I do a LOT of batch cooking…)
Grilled Ramps With Ricotta and Roasted Tomatoes
Ramps, those foraged wild onions with a big fan club, have been prolific this April. This recipe for the serious ramp lover, from Abra Berens’ 2019 book Ruffage (Chronicle Books), is a bit fancier than most, but isn’t hard at all to make.
This recipe starts with two bunches of ramps (roughly one pound). It also calls for the ramps to cook on an outdoor grill, unfortunately not an option for highrise-dwelling me, but it worked okay if a little awkwardly in my stovetop cast-iron grill pan.
Grilled ramps w/roasted cherry tomatoes + ricotta
Toss the ramps with a glug of oil and salt and pepper. Grill with the bulbs over the hottest part of the grill and the leaves over a cooler section. The ramp bulbs should be charred on the outside and slightly soft when touched; the leaves will singe a bit but not be frizzled completely to ash.
1⁄2 cup (120 g) ricotta
1⁄4 cup (60 ml) cream
1 lemon (1-½ fl oz | 45 ml), zest and juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup (240 g) roasted cherry tomatoes*
Combine the ricotta with the cream, lemon zest and juice, and salt and pepper. Spoon the ricotta onto a plate. Top with the ramps and dot with the roasted tomatoes.
For the roasted tomatoes: Start with 2 quarts of cherry tomatoes or 10 plum tomatoes (halved or quartered if large). Toss them with a glug of olive oil and pinch of salt and roast in a 425-degree oven, stirring regularly, until the liquid is reduced and syrupy, 15 to 25 minutes.
Served with roast Italian-seasoned chicken…
Take a Quiz
“America’s Dairyland” is one of Wisconsin’s two state nicknames (along with “Badger State”). Where does Wisconsin rank among states in cheese production?
a) 1st
b) 3rd
c) 4th
d) 7th
Answer: a) Wisconsin is, in fact, the nation’s biggest producer of cheese, with 3.4 billion pounds in 2019 according to the Statista website. California was second at 2.5 billion; Idaho was third at just more than1 billion. New Mexico and New York rounded out the top 5.
Coming Up…
Tomorrow is Market Monday, with additional markets added to the list of opening dates!